


One Lifetime

by zeldadestry



Category: Dollhouse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-24
Updated: 2010-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-14 02:01:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/144117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeldadestry/pseuds/zeldadestry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An unnamed woman reflects on her life in the shadow of the Dollhouses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Lifetime

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bobthemole](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bobthemole/gifts).



I was thirteen when the legislation passed making the Dollhouses legal enterprises, too young to pay much attention to the hearings. I went back recently and watched some of the recordings. Have you heard the excuses people made? They spun bullshit stories, trying to pretend the Dollhouses provided a benefit for everyone involved. Clearly, one of the owners said, if people are so desperate as to sell their bodies off as Dolls, we’re providing a merciful service to them. That rationalization disgusted me the most, especially since some Dolls are on lifetime contracts. To me, that’s nothing other than suicide. Frankly, I’ve got more respect for the customers and employees who admit they’re indulging their selfishness and greed than for those who claim any pretension of humanitarian effort.

I first heard about the Dollhouses as a child, no more than eight years old. It was a joke between my parents, whenever they thought I was being too independent or loud. “Be good, or it’s the Dollhouse for you!” For years I didn’t know what they meant but when I grew older I realized that, although they claimed to be kidding, they wouldn’t have minded playing with my brain at least a little, just to make me into something closer to the child they’d imagined before I was born.

Once I hit puberty and it was clear I wasn’t going to be a great beauty, or beautiful at all, really, my mom took me aside one day, not long after my fourteenth birthday, to show me pictures of other girls my own age, all of them prettier than I was. “If you could,” she said, “be yourself, exactly the same, but in another body, which of these would you like best?” Fortunately at that time, the regulations have changed since, as you no doubt know, no minor could be admitted for work at the Dollhouse without their consent.

My battle with my body was never about how I looked, anyway. I was most tempted by the services of the Dollhouse after I was first diagnosed with a cardiac arrhythmia. My husband and my doctors all thought the safest, most sensible, thing for me to do would be to finally transfer my consciousness into a healthy Doll. I admit I considered it for one sleepless night. In the end, my answer remained no, as it had every other time I’d faced the question before.

Once I’d made up my mind, my fears descended and fled on their own. Sometimes I was terrified of my own death, of my body’s decay, and sometimes I felt grateful to know I would have an end.

It does sicken me to know that once I die my husband will use my family’s money to provide for his own immortality. I married him without a prenuptial agreement. It was a mistake, I figured that out very quickly, but I was young and, once I’d done it, there was no recourse. He wants hundreds more years, he says, spent in perpetual youth. I pity the succession of young men whose own bodies will be hijacked to provide for his continuance.

Sometimes I’m interviewed about my refusal to support the Dollhouse, since virtually everyone who can afford the services uses them. People usually assume that my primary motivation is ethical and yes, of course it is, but that’s not what’s made it easy for me to keep away. I’m simply not afraid of what I can’t control. I do what I choose to do, accepting the results of my actions, and I want for all other people the same freedom.


End file.
